Local Filipina aids typhoon relief efforts

Josie McKee is volunteering her time helping coordinate aid to the Philippines

November 19, 2013_Oceanside, California_USA_| Josie McKee sits at what says is her command in her sister’s Oceanside home on Tuesday where she uses laptop computers to help PCI, Project Concern International, mobilize efforts to help the residents of her mother’s hometown of Hernani, in eastern Samar, Phillipines, which was hard hit by Typhoon Haiyan. |_Mandatory Photo Credit: Photo by Hayne Palmour IV/UT San Diego/Copyright 2013 San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC

November 19, 2013_Oceanside, California_USA_| Josie McKee sits at what says is her command in her sister’s Oceanside home on Tuesday where she uses laptop computers to help PCI, Project Concern International, mobilize efforts to help the residents of her mother’s hometown of Hernani, in eastern Samar, Phillipines, which was hard hit by Typhoon Haiyan. |_Mandatory Photo Credit: Photo by Hayne Palmour IV/UT San Diego/Copyright 2013 San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC

OCEANSIDE  There are 7,280 miles between Hernani, a typhoon-ravaged town in the Eastern Samar province of the Philippines, and the dining room table where Josie McKee has set up a disaster command post in her sister’s Oceanside home. But the Filipino-American’s round-the-clock effort to save the hard-hit village has helped make it the focus of an international relief effort.

Born in the Philippines and raised in San Diego’s Mira Mesa neighborhood, McKee has used her social media, marketing and relief agency skills to turn a global spotlight on the poor island fishing village where she lived for most of the past three years and where her family’s roots run deep. She has volunteered countless hours over the past 12 days to serve as a volunteer logistics liaison to PCI (Project Concern International), a San Diego-based relief group that has committed to helping rebuild Hernani.

On Nov. 8, Typhoon Haiyan swept across the eastern and central Philippines with wind gusts up to 235 miles an hour, leaving more than 5,000 people dead or reported missing. Another 4 million have been displaced. One of the first places the storm made landfall was Hernani, an East Coast village with just under 8,000 residents.

McKee was in San Diego visiting family when the typhoon struck. She said big storms hit the island with such regularity that Hernani residents habitually ignore evacuation warnings. As a result, most were caught off guard when an early-morning surge of seawater swamped the town, knocking out power and cellphone towers and destroying schools, church, hundreds of homes, as well as much of the downtown area, including the only gas station.

About 67 Hernani residents were killed and another 19 are still missing, according to unofficial figures, McKee said.

The night before the storm hit, town historian Maridel Terencia, 53, said she took her 1 1/2-year-old grandson Emilio to the Hernani elementary school, which was set up as an evacuation center. The night passed quietly but around 3 a.m., a storm surge began pushing waves of seawater into the classrooms.

“The water was knee-high inside the school room and we knew we had to get out as fast as we could,” Terencia said Tuesday in a phone interview from a relief convoy near Tacloban City. “When we got outside, the water was as high as my chest. We managed to get to a higher place and then after just five or 10 minutes the biggest waves came and they were 20 feet high.”

The surge knocked down trees and flattened all of the homes in the barrios along the shoreline, pushing a dangerous tide of debris into the village and as much as a half-mile inland. Terencia said she was struck on the shoulder by a floating door torn loose from a home. Her own house was completely washed away, with not a single piece of furniture or clothing left behind.

“Of course I was scared. We were hopeless because we didn’t know if we’d still be alive,” Terencia said. “My grandson has been affected by this very much. He’s afraid of the ocean. He’s afraid of the rain.”

Terencia and her grandson made their way to Manila after the storm where McKee was able to reach her by phone and get a firsthand description of the disaster. McKee said being in Oceanside has allowed her to organize aid in ways she couldn’t have otherwise.

“If I was back there, I couldn’t be helping them the way I am now,” she said. “I couldn’t have found PCI and I couldn’t be raising money, putting people together, and using Facebook, email, texts and the phone to try and make things happen. It was meant to be.”

McKee said she was watching the TV news on the day of the storm when she saw a report about PCI planning an aid mission in the Philippines. She posted a request for help on their Facebook page that night and they called her the next morning.

George Guimaraes, PCI's president and CEO, said McKee helped provide the logistic details, contacts and background they needed to fulfill their mission of helping the communities hardest hit by the storm.

“With her support, we’re able to go where the need is greatest,” Guimaraes said, adding that he believes the scale of the catastrophe in the Philippines is on par with the destruction PCI found in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

McKee put the PCI relief team in touch with Terencia, and she agreed to ride back to Hernani this week on a PCI truck laden with food, hygiene kits, basic medical supplies, clothing and other necessities. Also on the truck — which should arrive in Hernani sometime today — are the U-T TV team of anchor Kristina Le, a native of the Philippines, and cameraman Nelvin Cepeda, a native of Guam.

McKee’s family moved to San Diego from the Philippines when she was 3 years old, but her parents — Bob and Penny McKee-Rodriguez — always kept their ties to Hernani. Since the mid-1980s, they have owned a home there, and in 2008 they built a large hilltop house where they planned to retire one day. McKee was working in marketing in Florida three years ago when her parents asked her to deal with some land issues related to the Hernani property. She moved there in May 2010 and said she fell in love with the town, despite its endemic problems and poverty.

Because there is no industry or tourism, most Hernani residents live on remittance — money mailed home from Filipino workers living abroad. The nearest full-service hospital is six hours away, electricity is so spotty the local government has regularly scheduled brownouts and a bad storm will knock out water, power and food deliveries for up to two weeks, McKee said.

“Things are so bad there that when elections are held, the politicians always hold up Hernani as the worst-case example of the type of poverty they plan to fix. But somehow the government money never makes it to Hernani,” McKee said.

After the typhoon hit, millions of dollars began pouring into the Philippines, but McKee worried that Hernani would be forgotten once again. Armed with two years of experience working for the humanitarian agency World Vision International in Seattle, she started working the phones and Facebook to raise awareness of Hernani’s plight.

She said she takes catnaps during the day so she can stay up all night, when it's daytime in the Philippines. And when she's not online reading stories, emails and Facebook posts about what's happening over there, she's raising money and getting the word out to local Filipino families.

She has also launched a Facebook page where the public can discuss and share typhoon relief stories and ideas.

McKee said she wanted to work with PCI because its aid mission will extend far beyond the immediate needs of Hernani’s residents. The agency plans to teach Hernani residents how to rebuild the infrastructure of their community. The McKee-Rodriguez family home in Hernani has been offered to the PCI team as their base for operations.

“It’s about going from relief to reconstruction,” Guimaraes said. “Looking at the damage numbers right now, it looks like an enormous, huge destructive impact and there’s a lot of work to be done.”

PCI (Project Concern International)

What: A nonprofit organization founded in 1961 by a San Diego doctor. Now headquartered in Clairemont, it has the highest rating from the watchdog group Charity Navigator.

Presence: Works in 16 countries, from Bangladesh, Botswana and India to Haiti, Indonesia and Nicaragua. Has 624 staff members.